Alexandra Bulat took the time to analyse the latest EU citizens’ Settled Status stats from the Home Office. Here is what she found...

First published in August 2019.

The Home Office PR team will tell the media how “over 1 million applied”, “EU citizens are welcome”, and a bunch of other positive soundbites.

Here are five things that you will likely not hear though:

1. There is no scheme in the world that reaches 100% of its target. 1 million application is not a lot. Applications slowed down after the March spike, and only slightly picked up in July. We need to remember that 3 million EU citizens is a conservative ESTIMATE. Plus, family members can apply too.

2. Not everyone who applies gets Settled Status, therefore not everyone has ‘indefinite leave to remain’. Pre-Settled Status means LIMITED leave to remain. In July, only 56% of the 131,300 applicants were successful in applying for Settled Status. The others were given the lesser Pre-Settled Status.

3. There are ‘other outcomes’, which are mentioned in a footnote in the main report, and detailed in a table. Those other outcomes are withdrawn, invalid (no proof of ID or ‘other mandatory information’), or void. Again, I am not sure who those people are. We are just having more of them.

4. There is a backlog of over 88,000 applications, and we do not know who is waiting, for how long and why. I suspect this would disproportionately include non-EU family members applying through the scheme, on which it has been reported earlier that they are waiting longer.

5. We have no idea who is still left to apply and how many they are. Probably three-fourths of Poles in the UK and at least two-thirds of Romanians, as an example (again, judging by conservative estimates). Good luck with the December 2020 deadline in case of a No-Deal.

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[This piece was first published as a Twitter thread and turned into the above article on 16 August 2019, with the author’s consent, with the purpose of reaching a larger audience. It has been minorly edited and corrected. | The author of the tweets writes in a personal capacity.]

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